It’s finally official. honor has launched their brand new flagship smartphone, the honor 10, in China and it looks pretty darn awesome. Not only does it look like a viable alternative to the Huawei P20, in some aspects, it’s actually the better smartphone.
And that’s without factoring in the best part of any honor flagship — its price.
Let’s start with the spec sheet and honor’s brand new flagship smartphone features a killer set of flagship specs. In front, you’re getting a 5.84″ Full HD+ IPS LCD display with a 19:9 aspect ratio. Yes, there is a notch in front that houses the selfie camera, earpiece and a bunch of other sensors, but the taller aspect ratio likely means you won’t see it even if you stretch videos. Much like the notch on the P20, it looks like this is there mostly to house your notifications.
Good news is, the fingerprint scanner also finds its home on the smartphone’s chin. This front-mounted position means that you’ll get a less “full view” look, but it is far more practical that something mounted at the side, for example. The honor 10 also supports facial unlock like the P20.
Inside, the handset is packing Huawei’s flagship Kirin 970 processor with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for its advanced artificial intelligence features dubbed AI 2.0. Unlike the P20’s paltry 4GB of RAM, the honor 10 comes with 6GB of RAM, which puts it on par with the Huawei P20 Pro instead. There are two storage variants with a base 64GB and a variant with 128GB of internal storage. Unfortunately, there is no microSD card expansion.
For photos, you’ve got a dual camera setup at the back which is a combination of a 24MP sensor and a 16MP sensor, both of which feature f/1.8 aperture lenses and a bunch of AI enhancement goodies. In front, you’re looking at a 24MP selfie shooter with AI features that can recognise 500 different scenes for selfies and highlight various facial features.
Besides that, the honor 10 will pack a 3,400 mAh battery which puts it on par with the Huawei P20. It will also run Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box with the EMUI 8.1 skin. There will also be fast-charging which honor says can give you a 50% charge in just 25 minutes.
However, I think one of the most crucial features that the honor 10 has over the Huawei P20 is the fact that they kept the 3.5mm headphone jack.
In addition to the normal black and silver versions, the honor 10 will also come in two Twilight-inspired two-tone colour scheme called Mirage Purple and Phantom Blue, which looks mighty sexy.
honor’s new flagship smartphone will retail for CNY2,599 (around RM1,610) for the 64GB variant and CNY2,999 (around RM1,860) for the variant with 128GB of internal storage. That’s an awesome price especially when you compare it to the already affordable Huawei P20 which retails for RM2,599 here in Malaysia. There also appears to be a variant with 4GB of RAM, but that doesn’t seem to have made an appearance in the stores yet.
Will the honor 10 reach our shores? It looks very likely since honor Malaysia already dropped a revealing teaser with the hashtag #NEWHONOR coming soon to Malaysia. The only question is how much will it cost? Although honor skipped the honor 9, we did get the honor 8 and it was priced below RM2,000 so it seems likely that the honor 10 might come in below the 2K mark too.
What do you guys think of the honor 10? Let me know in the comments below.
